A portion of a Chronique anonyme universelle roll, in French [north-western France, c.1470]

three membranes of a roll, vellum, each c.680–690x480mm, and part of a 4th, totalling c.2050mm in length, each membrane numbered on the reverse at the bottom in medieval numerals ‘v’–‘vii’, the very top of no.vi also inscribed ‘xvi ystoryez’, presumably a count of the miniatures up to this point, the first extant roundels are ‘Obeth’ and ‘Sengar’, the first extant heading is ‘Comment Samuel le prophete eslut ung roy aux enffens d’Israel et cetera’, followed by a decorated initial and ‘Samuel, apres la mort Hely …’, illustrated with FOURTEEN CIRCULAR ILLUMINATED MINIATURES and part of the fifteenth, mostly c.69mm in diameter, two large circular diagrams, and 37 three-line initials alternately gold with blue penwork or blue with red penwork, somewhat worn and dirtied overall, a number of erasures, some flaking of pigments, not affecting the legibility of text of images, on a spindle in an elaborate box by ‘F. Rousseau - 1998’

PROVENANCE

Three other consecutive sheets of this roll are known: the first two, which continue directly from the present lot, are now Harvard, Houghton Library, MS Fr.495, and the third is in a private collection in Tübingen (described in detail by Lisa Fagin Davis, La Chronique anonyme universelle: Reading and Writing History in Fifteenth-Century France, 2014, esp. pp.107–9; the iconography of their seven miniatures in roundels are closest to those in Orléans, Bibl. mun., MS 470, which can be dated shortly after 1457).

TEXT AND ILLUMINATION

Twenty-eight copies of the text are known, most of which were apparently made for wealthy patrons; the earliest is datable to 1409–15, and later 15th-century copies extend the text to include the reigns of Kings Charles V, VI, VII, and Louis XI. A summary of the text, its sources, and its illustration, is in the recent exhibition catalogue Beyond Words: Illuminated Manuscripts in Boston Collections, 2016, no.178: ‘Compiled in France at the height of the Hundred Years’ War … the text tells a very Francophilic version of history, depicting the French as noble and virtuous and the English as war-mongering charlatans’; the earliest copy is thought to have been compiled for Marie de Bourbon, daughter of Jean, Duke de Berry, ‘making the Chronique a fascinating example of a text originally composed for the use of a literate, noble, and powerful woman.’

The subjects of the miniatures are: (1) a cityscape (Troy), (2–5) Four soldiers and their armies in ships: Aeneas, Primus, Turcus, and Helenus, (6) King David harping, (7) Brutus killing three giants, (8) a cityscape (Samaria), (9) masons building the city of Sicambria, (10) Romulus directing the building of Rome, (11) King Zedekiah, (12) Nebuchadnezzar’s body being chopped-up into 300 pieces by his son Evilmerodach, (13) Romulus surrounded by women, (14) the city of Lutetia (Paris) being built, (15) the top part of the feast of Belshazzar with a heavenly hand writing on the wall. The present part of the roll therefore preserves twice as many miniatures as the previously known portions.